Who is the current world Go champion?

Stefany93 · Post by **Stefany93** » Tue Sep 21, 2010 1:08 pm

Hello colleagues,

Any ideas who is the current world champion of Go and where the next fight for the tittle will take place? I have been searching a lot in Google and couldn't find a thing :evil:

Thank you very much!
Best Regards
Stefany

dfan · Post by **dfan** » Tue Sep 21, 2010 1:14 pm

This is a great site to see the current state of all the titles: http://igo-kisen.hp.infoseek.co.jp/news.html

There is no single "world champion" title the way there is in chess.

daniel_the_smith · Post by **daniel_the_smith** » Tue Sep 21, 2010 1:15 pm

Unlike chess, go doesn't really have official world champions.

Lee Changho, Lee Sedol, and Gu Li are all pretty strong, you could look them up.

gowan · Post by **gowan** » Tue Sep 21, 2010 1:17 pm

Stefany93 wrote:Hello colleagues,

Any ideas who is the current world champion of Go and where the next fight for the tittle will take place? I have been searching a lot in Google and couldn't find a thing

Thank you very much!
Best Regards
Stefany

There is no single world championship tournament in go. SOmehow what I would call international tournaments have come to be called world championships but there are many of these tournaments.

nagano · Post by **nagano** » Tue Sep 21, 2010 2:01 pm

Probably the closest thing to a world champion tournament is the new Super Meijin, in which the winners of the top national titles in Japan, China and South Korea compete. However, the tournament was set up unfairly, partly because there were an odd number of players. Admitting the winner of Taiwan's top tournament would have solved the problem, but no doubt China wouldn't have that. More useful would be a list of top players:

1. Lee Sedol
2. Kong Jie
3. Gu Li
4. Lee Changho

All of these have often been called #1, but it is far from certain which really is.

oren · Post by **oren** » Tue Sep 21, 2010 2:06 pm

Kong Jie deserves a lot of credit for having four international titles this year.

pitirre · Post by **pitirre** » Tue Sep 21, 2010 2:41 pm

I like that there isnt a world championship go match. in chess world there is always some kind of dispute and even some injustice to have a world chess champion.

in go just follow who wins more tournaments and other players ... and that's your TOP player.

I prefer that.

Suji · Post by **Suji** » Tue Sep 21, 2010 6:06 pm

pitirre wrote:I like that there isnt a world championship go match. in chess world there is always some kind of dispute and even some injustice to have a world chess champion.

in go just follow who wins more tournaments and other players ... and that's your TOP player.

I prefer that.

What disputes are there in chess now? The title has been reunified since 2006.

My personal opinion is that a Go world champion is needed, since Go would advance in ways that would be better. All the people that aren't world champion would improve drastically in order to have a shot at the title. You could market the game more if you had one person that was world champion, rather than multiple people who are "strong".

kokomi · Post by **kokomi** » Tue Sep 21, 2010 6:33 pm

There isn't a unified Go Rules, not to say a world champion.

sixko · Post by **sixko** » Wed Sep 22, 2010 12:42 pm

I too think it would be good to have a Go World Champion and that it could help promote the game. But if we can't have that, it would be nice to know who is the current top player by ranking at least. Some would say this is more meaningful then a world title anyway, as is sometimes the view with chess's Magnus Carlsen.

palapiku · Post by **palapiku** » Wed Sep 22, 2010 1:59 pm

There isn't a unified ranking either. At best you can evaluate different players' performance at international tournaments, but most matches are played outside of those.

tj86430 · Post by **tj86430** » Wed Sep 22, 2010 2:12 pm

There is a world amateur champion though: http://www.nihonkiin.or.jp/amakisen/wor ... esult.html

Laman · Post by **Laman** » Wed Sep 22, 2010 2:59 pm

sixko wrote:it would be nice to know who is the current top player by ranking at least.

actually i've thought about this not long ago. it would be possible to build up a database (my idea was based on european go database, as i am most familiar with that) where would be profesional games played in CKJT and internationaly and so all players would be rated and ranked.
it is very well possible someone already tried this.
there could be little trouble with a good supply for the games, but if there wouldn't be anything better, Mr. Kin's page could be sufficient at least for the top players.

dfan · Post by **dfan** » Wed Sep 22, 2010 3:30 pm

Laman wrote:
sixko wrote:it would be nice to know who is the current top player by ranking at least.

actually i've thought about this not long ago. it would be possible to build up a database (my idea was based on european go database, as i am most familiar with that) where would be profesional games played in CKJT and internationaly and so all players would be rated and ranked.
it is very well possible someone already tried this.

Yep - here's one from 2006 and one from 2008.

hyperpape · Post by **hyperpape** » Wed Sep 22, 2010 3:49 pm

Unfortunately, the ProGoR always seemed suspect to me. I've spoken up for Japanese players many times, but I think it's clear that the results on the international stage don't justify the many high ranking Japanese players. I suspect that the number of international games is small enough that you'd need to tweak the algorithm to deal with these relatively self-contained cohorts. No idea how you'd do that, though.

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